A Strategy for Functional Interpretation of Metabolomic Time Series Data in Context of Metabolic Network Information

Author(s)
Thomas Nägele, Lisa Fürtauer, Matthias Nagler, Jakob Weiszmann, Wolfram Weckwerth
Abstract

The functional connection of experimental metabolic time series data with biochemical network information is an important, yet complex, issue in systems biology. Frequently, experimental analysis of diurnal, circadian, or developmental dynamics of metabolism results in a comprehensive and multidimensional data matrix comprising information about metabolite concentrations, protein levels, and/or enzyme activities. While, irrespective of the type of organism, the experimental high-throughput analysis of the transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome has become a common part of many systems biological studies, functional data integration in a biochemical and physiological context is still challenging. Here, an approach is presented which addresses the functional connection of experimental time series data with biochemical network information which can be inferred, for example, from a metabolic network reconstruction. Based on a time-continuous and variance-weighted regression analysis of experimental data, metabolic functions, i.e., first-order derivatives of metabolite concentrations, were related to time-dependent changes in other biochemically relevant metabolic functions, i.e., second-order derivatives of metabolite concentrations. This finally revealed time points of perturbed dependencies in metabolic functions indicating a modified biochemical interaction. The approach was validated using previously published experimental data on a diurnal time course of metabolite levels, enzyme activities, and metabolic flux simulations. To support and ease the presented approach of functional time series analysis, a graphical user interface including a test data set and a manual is provided which can be run within the numerical software environment Matlab®.

Organisation(s)
Research Platform Vienna Metabolomics Center
Journal
Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences
Volume
3
No. of pages
8
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2016.00006
Publication date
03-2016
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
106044 Systems biology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous), Biochemistry
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/5753abd8-260f-4b86-9b9e-8340fc283f16